The increasing importance of networked devices and home networks for the consumer electronics industry forces immense administrative efforts by the devices, but also by the user, and may lead to PC like configuration and administration routines in such home networks. Generally, networks can be classified as having either client-server or peer-to-peer (P2P) architectures. In P2P based networks a device or network node is also referred to as a peer. Usually each peer can be unambiguously addressed through a unique label or identifier, e.g. a so-called Universal Unique Identifier (UUID). The peers in P2P networks may communicate directly with each other, so that no central network organization is required, and further may cooperate with each other, sharing services and resources and thus forming a so-called peer-group. Usually the peer-group as such gets a dedicated label, e.g. UUID, which can be used for identifying the members of the group. It can therefore also be used as an address to the peer-group. This label is usually changed when the structure of the peer-group is modified, e.g. a peer is added or removed. The described peer-to-peer networks and mechanisms are in a detailed manner published e.g. in WO 02/057917 A2.
Peers can be connected to the network or disconnected from the network at any time. Particularly home networks are highly dynamic systems, where peers are joining and leaving arbitrarily the system, or peer-groups are split or merged.
A method for building a home network using P2P technology is described in the not pre-published European Patent application EP02027122.7. According to the mentioned application, a home network can be implemented as a peer-group, by assigning a common group label to the peers. The resulting peer-group is called OwnerZone, and the common group label is called Zone_UUID. Communication between nodes is only allowed if they belong to the same OwnerZone, or to a specified so-called trusted zone. The OwnerZone concept aims at devices that may automatically set up a home network, with only minimal or no administration to be done by the user. According to the mentioned application, the peers may autonomously ‘negotiate’ their new Zone_UUID after any network modification. However, there is no method defined for automatically specifying a Zone_UUID for the new peer-group.
The mentioned document further describes that an OwnerZone offers a service for providing information regarding its structure and/or contents, referred to as Zone_Info_Data and being marked with a unique label. The database for Zone_Info_Data can be updated automatically and may contain information like e.g. Zone_UUID or Zone_Service_List. The Zone_Service_List defines which services the OwnerZone may offer. It may also define in detail which services shall be accessible for which trusted zones.
When the structure of an OwnerZone changes, e.g. a peer is connected or disconnected, or two OwnerZones are merged into a single new OwnerZone, then new Zone_Info_Data is generated in order to describe the structure and contents of the new OwnerZone. For example, the new Zone_Info_Data may contain information about both source OwnerZones, e.g. their respective Zone_UUIDs, and thus make it possible to track on OwnerZone modifications.